


Clara's Dream

by TheSaddleman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Humour, Mermaids, Romance, Sushi, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 17:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13082061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: Clara Oswald has always wanted to be a mermaid. And she decides to tell the Doctor while they're enjoying sushi in Vancouver.





	Clara's Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Although my novella "Clara's Destiny" was meant to be my final story before Peter Capaldi's final episode, I managed to sneak in this little piece of fluff. Enjoy!
> 
> EDIT: Although it wasn't intended as such, a later story I posted titled "Better Than a Pony" is pretty much a prequel to this tale. You don't need to read the other story first, but there's a gag in this story that's a bit funnier if you have.

“I’ve always wanted to be a mermaid, Doctor,” Clara said suddenly, without any provocation. 

She and the Doctor were enjoying plates of sushi in a tiny hole-in-the-wall in inner-city Vancouver. One of Clara’s students had visited there while on holidays and had recommended it.

The Doctor paused with a piece of sushi precariously held between two chopsticks midway between the plate and his mouth.

“Aside from making me feeling vaguely guilty about eating seafood at this moment, is there a reason for your sudden confession?” he said before completing the action of eating the piece of what was rather confusingly called a tarantula roll (which, while it looked vaguely like one, thankfully was not actually made of one).

“I want to know if mermaids are real,” Clara asked with a smile as she bit into a vegetarian temaki cone.

“I’ve taken you to a planet inhabited by fish people. Don’t they count?”

“No, they don’t. I want to know if you ever met Hans Christian Andersen, took him on a little trip, and he came back inspired to write _The Little Mermaid_.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” the Doctor said as he tried to pick up a slippery piece of sake without success.

Clara nearly choked on her rice. “Are you kidding me? Dickens? Charlotte Bronte? Mary Shelley? Shakespeare? Nearly every author you’ve come in contact with has been inspired by something they’ve done with you. I just hope you never met William S. Burroughs or else I’ll never look at you the same way again, Dr. Benway.”

The Doctor looked insulted. “Benway just had bad P.R. OK, I confess I might have been a nursemaid for a few literary legends here and there. Unfortunately, the closest I ever got to Hans was attending a dinner party that he also attended, but I was too busy keeping River away from the party favours.”

“Did Hans look like Danny Kaye?”

“Sadly, no.” 

“Too bad. But in all the worlds you’ve visited, surely there must be some place where real mermaids exist.”

“Why this sudden interest?”

“Not sudden. I’ve wanted to be a mermaid since I was a child, and I still do. You let me meet Robin Hood, so I was hoping…”

“… that I’d be able to introduce you to one?”

“Sure, why not?” Clara said as she crunched a piece of yam tempura roll.

“I wouldn’t hold your breath, Clara.”

Clara giggled and the two finished their meals while chatting about all manner of other topics ranging from reminiscing about past adventures to debating the merits of _The Last Jedi_ , which was still a couple of years away from release … for people without a time machine, that is. 

As Clara paid the bill (again), she noticed the Doctor staring out the restaurant’s front window, intently.

“What is it?” she called over.

The Doctor just smiled at her.

Outside, he took her hand. “Come with me.”

The led her down a block, and then crossed the street, and then walked back towards a park that Clara had spotted across from the restaurant.

“I don’t get it, Doctor, we could have crossed right there,” she said, pointing at a crosswalk that led nearly directly from the sushi place’s front door to the park gate.

The Doctor ignored her. “OK, now let’s go this way…”

“Doctor, this is a bush! Why are you walking me through a bush?” She tried to avoid ripping her tights on the sharp branches and somehow managed to succeed. 

The Doctor continued to lead her across the park. Ahead of her, Clara saw a large off-white wooden board with several oval holes in it. They finally came to a stop at the board.

“Clara, let me have your mobile.” She handed it over. “Now, if you please, stick your head through the hole on the left.”

Clara looked up at him. “Seriously? I haven’t done this since I was twelve.”

“Humour me.”

Clara shrugged and assumed the requested position. The Doctor jogged around to the front.

“That’s perfect, Clara. Now smile.” Clara smiled. “Again! I think your eyes were closed.”

“Doctor, I’m wearing sunglasses. You can’t tell.”

The Doctor stuck his tongue out. He looked at the camera. Satisfied, he pronounced: “OK, there we have it.”

Clara pulled her head out of the board. “If the front of this shows a donkey’s backside, I’m feeding you to the next Slitheen we encounter.”

“Slitheen aren’t carnivores, Clara.” The Doctor handed the camera back to her. She went to check the photo, but he put a hand on her arm. “Not yet. Let’s get back to the TARDIS first.”

The TARDIS was where they parked it, about a block away. Once inside, the Doctor asked Clara to hand over her phone again, and she complied. “I’ll plug it into the console so we can take a look together,” he said.

Clara still looked dubious. “If this ends up in the next UNIT Christmas Party slideshow I’m going to take revenge on you while you sleep, you do know that, right? I’ve been thinking of things to do with those eyebrows.”

The Doctor smiled and hooked Clara’s mobile into the console. Her most recent images began to scroll up, including one that made the Doctor cock his eyebrow at her.

“Why did you take a photograph of me bending over?”

“Uh, the camera went off by accident. I thought I’d deleted that one,” Clara said, quickly.

“I think the sushi is having a chemical reaction with your make-up. It seems to be changing colour.”

“Move on, Doctor!” 

The Doctor swiped through a few images until he got to the one he wanted. Clara’s jaw dropped. And then she walked up to the Doctor, threw her arms around his neck, and planted a kiss on his cheek.

The painting that had been on the front side of the board wasn’t exactly Walt Disney-calibre, but Clara didn’t care. With her head stuck through the hole, the illusion of having a mermaid body—complete with seashell bra, grey-scaled tail and Ariel-esque red hair—was complete.

“I knew you could do it,” she said.

“Clara, when have I ever let you down?”

**Author's Note:**

> The restaurant Clara and Twelve visit is based upon Sushiyama in Vancouver. I have had a tarantula roll. And no they are not made from tarantulas.
> 
> This story is inspired by Jenna Coleman's often-mentioned factoid that when she was a kid she always wanted to be a mermaid (and still does). In 2016, she had a photo taken of her with her head stuck through a wooden board with a mermaid painted on the other side. [You can see the photo here.](https://freelydifferentluminary.tumblr.com/post/168764629436/it-looks-like-jenna-got-her-wish-heres-the) Many thanks to Tumblr user Freely Different Luminary for posting this and inspiring me to write this little story that took a grand total of 30 minutes to write!
> 
> To find out why Clara has a photo of the Doctor bending over, see my story "Better Than a Pony".
> 
> Note: This story was originally posted as "Clara and the Mermaid" but I changed the title to "Clara's Dream" as I felt it telegraphed the ending too much.


End file.
